Gulf War soldiers took their battle for compensation back to the courts today.

Gulf War soldiers took their battle for compensation back to the courts today.

North East veterans want Gulf War Syndrome recognised as a specific illness.

A High Court judge in London will today give his ruling on an appeal by the Ministry of Defence against a decision that former Parachute Regiment medical officer Shaun Rusling, who suffers from a range of illnesses, was a victim of an identifiable syndrome due to his service in the 1991 conflict.

The decision, by a war pensions appeal tribunal in Leeds last May, was hailed by thousands of Gulf War veterans as a major development in their fight for damages against the MoD.

But the judge who heard the appeal earlier this year cast doubt on the wider implications of the case, to recognise Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) .

Mr Justice Newman said the appeal appeared to him to have no significance beyond questions of disablement pensions and whether the tribunal had the power in this instance to make a finding that GWS did exist.

But Les McCourt, 38, a Gulf War veteran of Felling, Gateshead, who lost his appeal with over 300 others to get compensation after suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after the Gulf War, said the decision could give hope to the former soldiers.

He said: "I knew the MOD was going to appeal against this decision - we knew that all along. Hopefully if it still goes forward and the appeal is over-turned it is going to be a good step for us.

"When we lost our court case a fortnight ago for PTSD a lot of the lads couldn't be bothered anymore. Hopefully this case will go our way and will give them hope again.

"I will keep on fighting. "

The MoD recognises "symptoms and signs of ill-defined conditions" (SSIDC), which satisfied Mr Rusling's pension claim, and says the tribunal wrongly concerned itself with the "label" of Gulf War Syndrome.

After fighting to establish his entitlements, Mr Rusling, 44, chairman of the Gulf War Veterans Association, won a 90 per cent back-dated disablement war pension, based on the MoD's diagnosis of SSIDC. But he continued to fight for official recognition of GWS.